Friday, July 2, 2010

[ZESTCaste] No decision at GoM on caste census

 

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article494928.ece?homepage=true

No decision at GoM on caste census
PTI

AP In this April 1, 2010 photo, a census worker fills in information
about a family as she conducts the national census at Ramsingh Chapori
village, east of Guwahati. A Group of Ministers will meet today to
consider the issue of inclusion of caste in census.

BJP dispels reports of differences on caste-based census Pranab to
head group on caste enumeration Caste: Chidambaram's proposal may be
accepted Movement against caste-based Census launched Government firm
on caste-based census: Minority Affairs Minister Congress leadership
pulls up Maken for writing letter opposing caste census

The Group of Ministers (GoM) on caste census on Thursday failed to
reach any decision on the politically-sensitive issue and decided to
meet again.

Sources said the GoM, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,
discussed the issue threadbare during the 90-minute meeting but no
decision was taken.

Among the aspects deliberated upon were the pros and cons of including
caste in census exercise, they said.

The GoM is also understood to have discussed modalities for
undertaking such an exercise if a go-ahead were given.

Government had last month decided to set up the GoM on the
controversial issue after consensus eluded at two meetings of the
Union Cabinet.

Parties like SP, RJD and JD(U) are strongly in favour of including
caste in census and disrupted proceedings of Parliament in the last
Budget Session by pressing their demands.

They are likely to raise the issue during Monsoon Session of
Parliament expected to commence in the third week of this month.

There are divisions even within Congress over the issue.

Caste census was last conducted in the country in 1931.

Besides Mr. Mukherjee, the GoM includes Home Minister P Chidambaram,
Law Minister M Veerappa Moily, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, Renewable
Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar,
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee and Textiles Minister Dayanidhi
Maran.

Of them, Mr. Moily, who has been the most vocal supporter of including
caste in census, left soon after the meeting began.

Mr. Abdullah, Mr. Pawar and Ms. Banerjee also did not attend the meeting.

The issue of inclusion of caste in census has triggered a debate with
a section opposing it saying that it would divide the society on caste
lines while others advocate that it would ensure fairer distribution
of resources to the backward and downtrodden sections of the society.

Reports had it that Mr. Chidambaram had suggested that the caste-based
census should be included in the second phase of the ongoing census
exercise and clubbed with the biometric card data to ease the
logistical constraints.

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Thursday, July 1, 2010

[ZESTCaste] On Hubert Harrison

 

Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918

In the early years of the 20th century, Hubert Harrison was among the country's best known and most brilliant African-American intellectuals. His reflections on the state and methods of literary criticism appeared in The New York Times. Scores more essays ran in scores of other publications. He lectured on history, sociology, and popular science to audiences both black and white -- quite literally in the street, at times, where he drew large crowds and worried the police. Any heckler who dared to challenge Harrison soon thought better of it; his witty replies reduced them to laughter, if not shamefaced silence. Well before the Harlem Renaissance, he worked out ideas and strategies that would echo in the civil rights struggle and the black power movement of later decades.

But by then, the source of that echo was long forgotten; Harrison had disappeared from the story of the struggle for racial justice and meaningful democracy. The circumstances are so paradoxical that it hurts. For the very qualities making him such a catalytic force -- independence of spirit, headstrong radicalism, and love of argument for its own invigorating sake -- also made him enemies. There is a price for speaking one's mind, and Harrison paid it. Following his death in 1927, no tribute to him appeared in the country's most prominent journals of African-American thought.

This intriguing figure has been rediscovered only over the past decade or so, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of Jeffrey B. Perry. If ever a scholar has served as recording angel -- rescuing memory from the ruins of time -- it is Perry, who spent decades researching Harrison while employed as a postal worker. In 2001, he edited The Hubert Harrison Reader, which provided a generous selection of writings otherwise scattered in crumbling periodicals, many of them now very rare. His new book, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, is the first part of a two-volume biography.

It portrays not only the life of a complex individual but also the world of a lost civilization. To see Harrison whole means reconstructing an era when self-educated young black intellectuals created literary societies to exchange books and argue over them -- an era when open-air meetings gathered around street-corner orators who lectured on evolution, feminism, and other controversial topics.

Born on the small Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1883, Harrison was in many ways like other immigrants who reached the United States in 1900. He was "thwarted by limited educational, political, and occupational opportunities at home," as Perry puts it, and possessed of both "a desire for more education and a propensity for self-education." He found work at the post office in New York while attending high school classes at night, where he soon won acclaim for his oratorical skills and "exceptionally thorough" command of classical and English literature.

That Harrison did not continue to university studies is something of a puzzle. But it is clear that Harrison found ample exercise for his talents in African-American literary circles, and in the growing Socialist Party, which by its peak in 1912 had elected hundreds of candidates to office around the country. He wrote theoretical essays showing a deep interest in contemporary social thought, bourgeois and Marxist alike. And he kept up a vigorous schedule of lectures, often holding more than 1,000 listeners rapt as he spoke for two hours or longer.

A memorable description of Harrison in this period comes from Henry Miller -- a profoundly apolitical writer but one who, decades later, recalled being awestruck when the speaker mounted his soapbox. "There was no one in those days," Miller recalled in his autobiographical novel Plexus, "who could hold a candle to Harrison.... He was a man who electrified one by his mere presence. Beside him, the other speakers, the white ones, looked like pygmies, not only physically but culturally, spiritually." When interrupted by a question or a diatribe from the crowd, Harrison "always retained his self-possession, his dignity." He would cock his ear "to catch every last word" then smile broadly and reply -- "always fair and square," wrote Miller, "always full on, like a broadside." (How he would fare today, in an era of sound bites and fractional attention spans, is a melancholy thought.)

Harrison's range of interests was encyclopedic, but he found his center of gravity as a thinker and activist in the fight for African-American rights. He occupied a distinctive -- and, apparently, rather uncomfortable -- position within the debates of his era. Harrison had no use at all for Booker T. Washington's program of slow economic improvement and patient accommodationism. The struggle against racism and for full equality could not be postponed. (Perry documents that Harrison lost his job as postal clerk through the efforts of Washington's cronies.) Yet he was also at odds with the perspective of Washington's most prominent critic, W.E.B. Du Bois, who championed a struggle for civil rights under the leadership of the black community's "talented tenth."

As a socialist, Harrison advocated class struggle as the necessary basis for real change. But here, too, he ran into conflict. Blacks were excluded from all but a few unions. Some leaders of his own party were unabashed white supremacists, and socialist newspapers ran racist jokes and cartoons. Harrison fought to make the party take seriously its own professed commitment to solidarity among all workers, but it was a losing battle.

Driven out of the party in 1914, Harrison set off to create a "New Negro Movement" that attracted wide support in Harlem. One of its adherents was a newly arrived Jamaican immigrant named Marcus Garvey, whose own black nationalist organization would soon outstrip Harrison's efforts. Perry's second volume will cover the final years of Harrison's short life (he died at the age of 44), which included a complicated relationship with the Garveyite cause.

While it is unlikely that either Martin Luther King or Malcolm X ever heard of Hubert Harrison, he would have recognized each of them as an inheritor of his own efforts. As for Barack Obama -- well, I suspect Harrison would give the president a hard time, in a good-natured but serious way. It is difficult to picture Hubert Harrison overawed by the trappings of office, and impossible to imagine him biting his tongue for anyone.

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[ZESTCaste] 07/01/10-Proper communication The Buddha’s lesson-Mayawati calls for capturing power in Delhi- Great News

 

07/01/10
Proper communication The Buddha's lesson-Mayawati calls for capturing power in
Delhi- Great News
Filed under: General
Posted by: @ 8:49 am
Proper communication The Buddha's lesson
Priyanka KURUGALA
The Buddha always uttered the serene words, and that was meant for the whole
endless universe. Many incidents in his life teach the modern society the apt
way of communication. Abhayarajakumara Sutta, found in Majjhima Nikaya, is one
such discourse with a valuable communication lesson.
One of the Buddha's contemporaries was Nigantha Nataputta, who claimed himself a
popular teacher of non-violence. And certainly he had the support of a large
crowd.
Nataputta's non-violence was too extreme, to the extent that he swept the ground
by a sheaf of peacock feathers before he walked on. This was to save the lives
of innocent creatures such as ants from being trampled. He and his followers
never consumed water without boiling it first, to make sure no microscopic
creature is killed. Interestingly he did not brush his teeth and stayed naked
all the time.
One day Nataputta had a visitor, Prince Abhayaraja, one of his disciples.
Nigantha wanted to brief him about the way the prince should approach and
verbally beat the Buddha gradually. Teacher's keen interest nevertheless puzzled
the student.
"How could I do that?" He asked.
Nataputta then disclosed what he had in his mind. Abhayaraja was to question the
Buddha whether the latter uttered disagreeable and distasteful words.
"If the answer is yes," Nataputta offered, "then you should ask the Buddha the
difference between you and the run-of-the-mill. Well, if the answer is negative,
then you should raise the issue of Devadattha. The Buddha's words were
distasteful for Devadatta because he said the monk would stay in Samsara till
the end of this world cycle."
Nataputta fancied that the Buddha would neither be able to swallow nor spit the
words. Ironic is the way Nataputta had his thoughts, especially when he claimed
himself a non-violent person. Nataputta could convince the prince, who
ultimately agreed on visiting the Buddha for a debate.
Abhayaraja worshipped the Buddha and noticed that the sun was about to set. So
he had the Buddha, along with three more monks, in for alms giving. Following
the alms, Abhayaraja was ready for his mission.
"Blessed Sir, do you talk disagreeable and distasteful words to the people".
Notice the Buddha's response: "I could not say, directly. It depends on the
situation."
What was Abhayraja's response right off the bat? "Nigantha is finished!"
The Buddha posed him a question as if he didn't have inkling about anything:
"Why do you say so?"
Then prince Abhayaraja related the whole story to the Buddha. That's when the
Buddha spotted the infant on the prince's lap.
"Suppose your baby get something stuck in its throat. What will you be doing the
first thing?"
"First I will try my best to fish it out. Failing, I will hold his head steady
with my left hand and give it a try once more. And perhaps even pull it out even
if his throat will bleed. All because of my love for my child, exclaimed
Abhayaraja." Abharaya replied in length.
That was enough for the Buddha.
"It's just the same with my words, prince."
1. If any word is false, useless or distasteful and disagreeable I will not
utter it.
2. Should any word be true, but useless, or distasteful and disagreeable I will
not utter it.
3. If any word is true and useful, but disagreeable and distasteful I will utter
it.
4. If any word is false and useless but agreeable and tasteful, to others still,
I will not utter it.
5. If any word is true, useful, agreeable and tasteful, I will say that word.
All because of my mercy and loving kindness for beings.
Abhayaraja was convinced, better yet he had another question for the Blessed
One.
"There are numerous kinds of people who come to you with various types of
questions. These people may be wise, warriors, Brahmins, businessmen,
householders.
Are you prepared in advance in your answers or do you answer according to the
situation?"
The Buddha knew the answer fully well, and yet he shot the prince with another
question.
"Prince, you have a good knowledge of vehicles, I suppose?"
"That's true, Blessed Sir."
"Well in that case, say someone approaches and questions you about vehicles.
Will you be able to handle it properly?"
"Sure I can, Blessed Sir."
"Is it simply because you have been prepared in advance or do you answer
accordingly? "
"I don't need preparation. I answer accordingly. "
"In the same way, prince I do answer accordingly. I do not need preparation in
advance."
The chain of events in the discourse is a good example for management of
communication among individuals. Though the technology is far more advanced,
communication tends to be confusing at times. The Buddha's message is not to
utter useless words.
Communication is the most developed subject of the world. The world now has many
a communication equipment, thanks to man-made communication systems and
networks. Similarly there are number of communicators. Messengers and receivers
are always ready to catch up with very new stories. This is certainly a complex
process.
The same complex process will generate wrong and disorganized messages, which is
the root cause of a confused society. This is very much true when it comes to
media world in particular. Disorganized messages confuse the receiver who in
turn responds in the same confusing manner.
The wrong communication will at times sabotage the serenity and peace of a
family too. Unpleasant words are not for the development of soul, after all.
This causes the direct deterioration of modern society.
It's about time we had taken the initiative to utilize communication to
rehabilitate the society as a whole. Let's roll our sleeves up on this Poson day
itself!
NEWSSPECTRUM
Mayawati calls for capturing power in Delhi
Mayawati calls for capturing power in Delhi Lucknow, June 25 Delhi appears to be
the next target of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)
president Mayawati, who Friday called for capturing power in the national
capital. Addressing a meeting of her party activists from Delhi and Uttarakhand
at her official residence here, Mayawati said that millions of people from Uttar
Pradesh have moved to Delhi in search of employment, but alleged they continue
to receive step-motherly treatment at the hands of successive governments. "That
is the reason we need to strengthen our party base in the national capital so
that we can form a BSP government there and ensure that the Uttar Pradesh's
population gets its due," she said. The BSP supremo also chalked out a strategy
to broaden the BSP base in Delhi and urged her party men to follow her
guidelines. She gave similar instructions to her party leaders from Uttarakhand
where her party has minimal presence, largely on account of a very low SC/ST
population in the hill state. On the other hand, there was much more scope for
BSP to spread its wings in Delhi among the large SC/ST population and where
Mayawati herself grew up. Mayawati calls for capturing power in Delhi
Great News …..
Mayawati'Ji carved a new district called Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar out
of Sultanpur and Rae Bareli districts on Thursday. Congress strongholds Amethi
and Rae Bareli will be parts of the new district.

"The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to restore the district status to
Chattrapati Sahuji Maharaj Nagar," an official spokesman told reporters.
The new district includes three Sultanpur Assembly seats and two seats of Rae
Bareli.
Back in 2003, the Congress wanted to name the new district Rajiv Gandhi Nagar
after the late prime minister. But the BSP-led government wanted the district to
be named after the SC/ST OBC icon from Maharashtra.

 MAY YOU BE EVER HAPPY, WELL AND SECURE
MAY YOU LIVE LONG
MAY ALL SENTIENT AND NON-SENTIENT BEINGS BE EVER HAPPY
MAY YOU BE ALWAYS HAVE CALM, QUIET, ALERT,ATTENTIVE AND
EQUANIMITY MIND WITH A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING THAT
NOTHING IS PERMANENT

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati renames new district in Gandhi stronghold

 

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mayawati-renames-new-district-in-gandhi-stronghold-34946

Mayawati renames new district in Gandhi stronghold

NDTV Correspondent, Updated: July 01, 2010 15:44 IST

New Delhi: With the Rahul Gandhi threat to her turf growing by the
day in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Mayawati has fired the next salvo
in the fierce battle for Dalit votes.

She has resurrected a move to carve out a new district that includes
the Gandhi strongholds of Amethi and Rae Bareli, and name it after a
Dalit icon.

The new district, carved out of Rae Bareli and Sultanpur districts,
will be called Chhatrapti Sahuji Maharaj Nagar. It will include three
Sultanpur Assembly seats and two Rae Bareli seats.

The Parliamentary constituency will remain Amethi, which Rahul Gandhi
represents and will not be affected by the new district being carved
out. Congress President Sonia Gandhi represents the Rae Bareli
Parliamentary constituency.
"The state cabinet in its meeting chaired by Chief Minister Mayawati
has decided to restore district status to Chattrapati Sahuji Maharaj
Nagar," PTI quoted an official government spokesman as saying on
Thursday.

The BSP government of 2003 had accorded district status to the Amethi
Lok Sabha constituency, then represented by Congress chief Sonia
Gandhi, and renamed it Chatrapati Sahuji Maharaj Nagar.

The Congress opposed this. It was not against a new district but
wanted it named Rajiv Gandhi Nagar. The next government, that of the
Samajwadi Party, revoked the notification.

Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj is a Dalit icon from Maharashtra.

(with PTI inputs)

Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mayawati-renames-new-district-in-gandhi-stronghold-34946?cp

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati announces nation-wide protest against price rise

 

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_mayawati-announces-nation-wide-protest-against-price-rise_1403509

Mayawati announces nation-wide protest against price rise

PTI
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 20:26 IST

Lucknow: After announcing a state-wide agitation early next month
against rise in prices of petroleum products, Uttar Pradesh chief
minister Mayawati today said BSP will hold a nation-wide protest on
July 15.

Mulayam Singh manhandled as he unveils Lohia's statue in UP
"The party will stage demonstrations and dharna against deregulation
of petroleum products at all the state headquarters across the country
on July 15," Mayawati announced in a meeting of BSP leaders from
different states.

The BSP supremo had already announced that the party would stage
demonstrations and dharna in all 71 districts in UP on July 6.

"Continuous hike in prices of petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene and the
Congress-led UPA government decision to deregulate petrol is
completely against the interest of the common people," Mayawati
alleged.

During the two-day meeting which ended today, she reviewed functioning
of the organisation in different states.

"Congress slogan of party's hand with aam aadmi has turned out to be a
farce," Mayawati alleged.

She said through demonstrations and dharna, party would demand that
petroleum products be brought under government control again.

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